Skeletal representations of shape in human vision: Evidence for a pruned medial axis model.

ABSTRACT: A representation of shape that is low dimensional and stable across minor disruptions is critical for object recognition. Computer vision research suggests that such a representation can be supported by the medial axis-a computational model for extracting a shape's internal skeleton. However, few studies have shown evidence of medial axis processing in humans, and even fewer have examined how the medial axis is extracted in the presence of disruptive contours. Here, we tested whether human skeletal representations of shape reflect the medial axis transform (MAT), a computation sensitive to all available contours, or a pruned medial axis, which ignores contours that may be considered "noise." Across three experiments, participants (N = 2062) were shown complete, perturbed, or illusory two-d

SUBMITTER: Ayzenberg V 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6894409 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature